Iowa Mennonite School

The IMS boys cross country team placed fourth Thursday  in the A division at the Fairfield Invitational cross country meet.  Iowa Mennonite was in a close four-way race for third place behind Highland and Wapello who took first and second places.  Cody Miller led the team placing fifth with a career best time of 18:04.  Kirby Shetler ran with Cody much of the race and ended up in seventh place in 18:15.  Kirby was over a minute faster than he was on this course last year.  Jacob Valov, Jacob Schmieder and Richard Deming all ran strong races in their second ever cross country competition.  All three recorded personal best times.  Richard cut a whopping five minutes off his time last week.  Kobi Russom also came through with a good effort finishing a minute and a half faster than last year.  Ben Polley of Wapello was the individual titlist touring the course unchallenged in 17:06.

Andy Fang competed in the junior varsity race which included runners from both A and AA divisions.  He finished in twentieth place with a time of 20:50.

The Iowa Mennonite girls cross country team placed fourth in a five team field at the Fairfield Invitational cross country meet Thursday.  Renee Buckwalter had a good race to medal by placing eleventh in 18:27.  Riley Schmieder also had a strong race to finish in eighteenth place in 19:14.  Camila Segar, Summer Schrock and Alvard Mamikonyan rounded out the scoring for the team.  Alvard showed the biggest improvement in her time over her time at the Early Bird meet last week.  Freshman Gwen Wright of Pekin led from the gun to win the girls varsity A race in an impressive time of 15:26.